


Lost in the Shadows

by Gia279



Series: 5+1 Things [10]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Established Relationship, Fighting Monsters, Ghouls, Gore, Happy Ending, Hunters, Kelpies, M/M, Pack Bonding, Vampires, Wendigos, creatures of the night, dangerous times, dead bodies, or ghosts, poor human Stiles, wraiths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-18
Updated: 2016-11-18
Packaged: 2018-08-31 18:18:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8588800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gia279/pseuds/Gia279
Summary: Or...The five times Stiles dodged death, and the one time death caught up to him.(It has a happy ending, I swear.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> I swear, there is a happy ending! :D Please enjoy this dark little thing that popped in my head the other day. 
> 
> The title is a song from the Lost Boys movie because I love that movie.
> 
> *Note, I changed the lore for the creatures because I wanted to and it was fun, so some of it might not match, like, actual research into whichever creature they're fighting. For that I say, FICTION. FANTASY. Wooooo fun.
> 
>  
> 
> **Fixed a crap ton of typos. Sorry about that! <3 **

**1**

“I think there are better ways to build comradery than to launch an attack on a wendigo in teams!” Stiles called over his shoulder. 

“Yes, but nothing builds trust like saving each other’s asses from mortal peril!” Scott replied cheerfully. He let out a sharp yelp when he tripped over a tree root.

Stiles stopped to check on him, earning impatient sighs from his “team”, which consisted of Jackson, Isaac, and Derek—Derek was there to even things out and make sure the other two didn’t leave Stiles to get eaten.

Not that he really thought they _would_ leave him. But he wasn’t sure they _wouldn’t_ , either.

“I just think we could have probably just played a game or something in the backyard. Or maybe-” 

Hot, rancid air rolled over the back of his head, stopping the words in his throat. 

Scott’s face whitened, which did not encourage him. 

Stiles fumbled for the lighter in his pocket, his fingers trembling, but he couldn’t get it before a long, clawed hand curled around his throat from behind and lifted him clean off his feet. It flung him off to the side—it was more interested in the werewolves than him at the moment. The werewolves were a threat—he was just dinner. 

He rolled on landing, yanking his lighter out and flicking it desperately while the others rushed the wendigo.

It stood probably about seven feet tall, pale and fleshy and enraged, snarling and throwing the pack about like ragdolls. 

Erica and Boyd rushed it from the side while Scott went for its long, slender legs. 

“Fire, you morons! We have to burn it!” Stiles shouted. “And this—damn—thing—is—defective!” He shook the lighter and tried again, finally striking a flame. He set it to the torch he’d been carrying, Indiana Jones-style. It lit up, accelerated by gasoline. 

“We can’t light it on fire if we can’t get close enough to it!” Jackson snarled back. 

Erica danced back from the fight, snatching up her own torch where she’d dropped it a few feet away. She charged toward Stiles and thrust it out, tapping it against the flames on his.

Once it was lit, she ran at the wendigo, which swung out an arm and swiped it right out of her hands. 

Scott and Boyd ran to Stiles to light their torches too, while the others distracted it. Stiles flinched when it swiped long claws across Derek’s face, flinging blood.

“Just stay here so we can use yours to light ours,” Scott said seriously. 

Stiles scoffed, but he didn’t move—if they thought they could handle it without him getting his ass kicked all over the preserve, then he was fine with that. 

The wendigo grabbed Jackson by the throat and lifted him, then flung him at a tree—it shuddered on impact. Jackson groaned when he hit the ground, pushing himself up slowly. 

Derek grabbed Jackson’s torch and lit it and his own with Stiles’s. “You okay?” he asked, checking over his shoulder at the wendigo. 

It was basically playing with the pack, swatting and clawing at them like a gigantic, ugly cat.

“Yeah, I barely felt it when I hit the ground. Better get that fire to it, though. It should catch pretty easily. All the lore says it burns like tinder.” Stiles hesitated, then touched the already-healed skin of Derek’s cheek. “You?”

“I could be better.” He grinned a little.

“Be careful.”

Derek nodded and turned back to the wendigo, which let out an unearthly shriek and rushed him. He ducked and bolted to the left, drawing it away from Stiles. 

Stiles backed up, holding his torch out in front of him and gagging at the scent wafting through the air when the wendigo lurched past. 

Isaac and Erica jumped on its legs and shoulders, taking it to the ground. Boyd dropped onto its torso to help hold it down. Derek approached with his torch and jabbed it toward its face; the wendigo snapped at it with jagged, broken teeth and ripped it from his hands. 

Stiles looked around for the rest of the pack, saw them littered across the ground, and ran for the wendigo as it was jumping up to shake the betas off. Stiles jabbed his torch into its ribs—its flesh ripped like wet paper, making him gag again, but it caught. 

They all leaped back as the wendigo screamed and burned. 

“See?” Scott asked, panting a little. “No problem. We had it.” He looked at Isaac and Jackson, who were picking themselves up off the ground and brushing their clothes off. 

“Yeah, you had it, alright,” Stiles muttered. He stepped back when the wendigo came too close and wondered when his life had become watching a supernatural creature burn without flinching. “Oh, hey, my dad wants to know who all is coming on Thursday.” 

“I’ll be there. My parents are visiting family for Thanksgiving and I don’t want to go,” Erica said cheerfully, skipping back as the wendigo writhed toward her. “Boyd?”

“Yep, I’m coming.” 

“Cool.”

“Isaac, Mom, and me are coming,” Scott said. “Allison said she and Chris might stop by.”

“Okay. I’ll let him know.” He glanced around, brows raised.

Derek muttered, “You already knew I was coming.” 

“Yeah. Any time after noon is good to come by. Derek can come with me in the morning.” 

“Should we put it out?” Boyd asked, nodding toward the wendigo, which had stopped moving and was just a burning pile of ick. 

“Probably, before the flames catch anything else. I have a fire extinguisher in the-” Something grabbed a fistful of the back of Stiles’s jacket, yanking him off his feet with a cry. 

Everyone else yelled. He started to kick his feet as whatever had him dragged him a tree, but something hit him over the head and everything went silent. 

 

When he woke up, he grimaced as he tasted blood—he must have bitten his tongue. He was somewhere dark. It was only evening, so it shouldn’t have been as pitch black as it was. He could hear something slurping in the dark, a few feet away from where he was strewn on the ground. Under his palms was stone, coarse and damp. He sat up, groaning quietly. 

The slurping and crunching stopped. 

Stiles found himself holding his breath, feeling around on the ground for something to grab onto, a weapon, anything. He closed his fist around a rock that felt pitifully tiny in his hand.

Something large skittered across the floor at him, making him yelp and scrambled back until he hit a wall. 

The stench of rotting meat rolled over his face, moist and hot. Something scraped over his chin—a horrible second later he realized it had been a set of teeth. He turned his face away and swung his fist up, cracking the rock across its face. It roared while he scrambled away, feeling his way along the wall at a run. He tripped over something soft and shuddered, regaining his balance enough to run. 

The thing—he suspected the wendigo they’d burned hadn’t been the only one lurking in the preserve—snarled and started after him, which was when he realized he had his phone in his pocket. 

He fumbled to turn on the flashlight, turning it on the creature’s face. 

It shrieked and backpedaled, clawing at its eyes.

Stiles ran again, swearing when he saw the body parts littering the cave floor. The light cast by his phone jerked around as he ran, making everything so much worse, coming in flashes like a horror movie. He saw a sliver of light ahead of him, enough to give him hope.

He ran toward it and avoided looking at the ground, even as his shoes slipped through something thick and wet. 

“No!” He banged his fist against the boulder blocking the cave entrance, his heart hammering in terror. 

Behind him, the wendigo drew in ragged breaths that grew closer with every passing second. Figuring he was better off in the dark with two hands than with a flashlight and one hand, Stiles turned the light off and stuffed the phone in his pocket. He wished he hadn’t have dropped his rock. It wasn’t much, but it was something. 

When he could feel the wendigo’s breath on his face, he swung, his fist connecting with its face. 

It snarled and swung back, slashing its claws across his cheek and knocking him off his feet. He blinked back reflexive tears and held his arms over his head.

The wendigo didn’t bother with his head; it just grabbed his ankle and started dragging him further into the cave again. 

Panicked, knowing what would happen to him should it get him where it wanted him, he started flailing, grabbing at anything he could get his hands on. 

His hand closed around what felt like a leg, to his horror. It was covered in denim. As the wendigo dragged him, his loosened grasp slid up the leg, toward the pocket; a pack of cigarettes was still lodged in it. 

He kicked his leg, hard, and connected with the wendigo’s head. He dug around in the pocket of the jeans until he could get the cigarettes out and feel around for a lighter. He found what felt like a mostly empty Bic lighter and pressed it into his palm. 

The wendigo grabbed his throat, dragging him close to its face. 

Stiles brought his hand up near its head and flicked the lighter, pressing the flame against its cheek. 

It screamed and jerked away, but the lore was right—its skin caught like tinder. 

Stiles scrambled back, putting distance between himself and the barbeque. 

“Stiles! Stiles, are you alive?!”

“I smell fire! Move the rock!” 

Stiles closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the wall, letting out a breath of relief.

The boulder scraped and groaned across the stone ground as the pack pushed it. 

Derek was the first one in, grabbing Stiles up and carrying him away from the seared wendigo as quickly as he could. “I’m sorry,” he said gruffly. “They’re fast when they have a meal, and we couldn’t keep up.” 

“I know. You guys found me, at least.” Stiles let his head fall against Derek’s shoulder. “Can we go home now? I’m exhausted.”

“I think we have to take you to the hospital, actually.”

Stiles groaned. “Why?” he whined.

“You’re bleeding.” 

He sighed and pressed a quick kiss against the side of Derek’s neck, making him shiver slightly. “Fine. But after that, take me home.” 

“I promise.” 

 

   
**2**

Stiles rolled onto his back. When the sunlight insisted on coming in, still, he pulled a pillow over his face. From across the room, he heard a chuckle that made him smile. He still didn’t want to get up, but he was less bad tempered about it.

“I know you’re awake,” Derek said. The bed dipped under his weight as he got on it. “And I know you’re going to get up.” 

“Oh yeah?” Stiles mumbled, pressing the pillow more firmly against his face. “How do you figure?”

“Melissa asked if we could go to the store and pick up some last minute things for tomorrow, and I know you never say no to her.” His voice was far too smug. 

“Lies. I say no when it’s this early.”

“You don’t even know what time it is.” 

“The sun is coming in through my window. That means it’s early. That’s all I need to know.” 

Derek laughed and crawled across the bed until he was laying beside Stiles. He burrowed so his head was under the pillow, too, and they were face-to-face. 

Stiles wrinkled his nose. “You’re not supposed to look so put together this early,” he whined. 

Derek reached up and traced a finger across the healing cuts on Stiles’s face. “They still hurt?”

“Not really.” He sighed. “I guess I am getting up. How crowded could a grocery store be at this hour, anyway? On a Wednesday, no less.”

Derek just smiled. 

 

Everything was lies and senior discounts. There were old people everywhere, scooting and limping their way across the aisles, growling and snapping at anything with a pulse that dared try to go around them when they went too slow. 

“That was the worst thing…ever. That poor cashier. She looked ready to cry. Why are old people so _mean?_ And so determined not to understand the very clear rules about the sales!” Stiles added, waving an arm around indignantly. “It wasn’t even my coupon but I could see the restrictions written on it. It wasn’t _that_ small.”

Derek was deeply amused about Stiles’s ire at Senior Day at the grocery store. Then again, the old people all seemed to like him. Apparently Stiles gave off some sort of aura of attitude that pissed them off on sight. “She was much happier to see us.”

“To see _you_ , you mean. Can’t blame her. Seeing that face in the morning is enough to perk anyone up.” He shrugged when Derek shook his head. 

Derek started loading the trunk of his car with the bags while Stiles checked the text that had come through on his phone. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he mumbled. 

“What?”

“Scott said something has been digging up graves and that it smells inhuman.” Stiles indulged himself and kicked the rear tire lightly. “He said we can drop the groceries off at Melissa’s, then he wants us to come to the cemetery.”

“Did he say “come to the cemetery” or did he _ask_?” Derek put the last of the bags away and slammed the trunk.

“What do you think?” Stiles snorted. “I don’t know what would be digging up graves, though.”

“Are the bodies gone?” Derek asked as he unlocked the car doors. 

“Lemme ask.” Stiles got in the passenger seat and buckled in before Scott answered. “They’re gone. Or—ewwww, most of them are gone.” 

“Gross,” Derek agreed. 

“Okay, I’m going to start googling. Scott hasn’t really given me much to go on, but what eats the dead, anyway?” 

“I’m not sure…” 

Stiles flapped his hand, already searching. “Want to get some coffee on our way there?”

“Sure.” 

By the time they made it to the cemetery, Stiles had decided it was a ghoul—something that fed on flesh (dead flesh, too, double ew) and generally resided in desert-like areas. 

“Does it say how to kill it?” Derek asked.

“Apparently cutting its head off is pretty effective. Naturally.” Stiles scrolled some more. “A hard blow to the head could also kill it, I guess. I’d still cut it off.”

“Did you bring your knife, or should we stop at the apartment after we drop the groceries off?”

“I’ve got it. I never leave the house without it anymore.” He tapped his boot, where his knife was stored. 

 

Scott and Isaac were waiting outside of the cemetery, vaguely disgusted expressions on their faces. 

“I thought ghouls lived in hotter climates,” Isaac said once they were in earshot. 

“Maybe it got bored,” Stiles said dryly. “Have you guys figured out where it’s staying?”

“We were waiting for you guys, in case we needed back up. Boyd and Erica are driving her parents to the airport.” 

“Have you found its scent anywhere?” Derek asked, reaching out to zip Stiles’s jacket absently as the wind whipped through. 

“It’s hard to follow—everything smells the same here. It’s just slightly stronger wherever the ghoul’s been.” 

“Gross,” Stiles muttered. 

“Let’s go to the most recent grave and follow the scent from there.” 

“I should wait here,” Stiles said. “To watch the gate.” 

“You should stay close to us, in case anything happens.”

“Um, I was kidnapped by a wendigo four days ago,” he pointed out. “And I still killed it by myself.”

“That’s why you should stay close. Go on, guys,” Scott said cheerfully, linking his arm through Stiles’s and dragging him gently. 

Derek and Isaac walked ahead of them. 

Stiles scoffed. “Why do I have to go in?”

“Because Derek worries if you’re out here by yourself.” 

“Oh.” 

Scott mimicked him good-naturedly, elbowing him as they made their way along a path through the cemetery. 

Stiles picked at his jeans. “Maybe we should have brought flowers,” he said uncomfortably. He couldn’t help feeling guilty as they passed each headstone. 

“We’re saving them from having their resting places desecrated and their bodies eaten. I think we could get a pass.” Scott clapped his hand on his shoulder. “We could come back later with flowers if you wanted.” 

“Maybe. Depends on how this goes.” He would for sure bring back flowers for his mother, but that was something he always did near every holiday. 

“Whatever you want, man. Oh, look, they found something.” Scott’s face fell into grim lines as they neared the violated grave. 

Isaac grimaced. “The scent is all over the place, but I think it’s living somewhere in the cemetery.”

“Makes sense. Why leave when there’s so much—eugh—food around?” Stiles kicked at the dirt pile slightly. “If it was smart, it would just rebury the caskets. Why not?” he asked sharply when everyone looked at him like he was crazy. “How soon do you think people would be exhuming bodies to make sure they’re still there?” He put his hand in his pockets. “I was just wondering if it was a thinking creature, that’s all.” 

“It’s still not right,” Isaac said quietly. “Did you read everything you sent to us? They turn _into_ the person they ate.” His jaw ticked and he looked away. 

“Oh. So we’re looking for…” He looked at the headstone. “Ah, 94-year-old Edith Grupper?” 

“Unless it has eaten more recently.” Scott shook his head. “In broad daylight, too.”

“I think it’s only in movies where the dramatic scenes happen only at night. Plus, we should be grateful. It’s easier to see things that are out of place in the daylight,” Stiles said. He pointed toward the keeper’s shed. “Like that, for instance. Is the door supposed to be open?” 

“No.” Isaac looked at Scott for direction.

“Derek, do you want to come with me? Isaac and Stiles can wait here while we check the shed?”

“Sure.” Derek gave Stiles a wry look over his shoulder, which made him snort. 

Isaac crossed his arms. “I don’t want to be here,” he muttered. “Get your knife out,” he snapped. 

“What? No way. I’m not being the creep standing over a grave with a _knife_.” 

“Stiles!” he snapped again. “Just take it out!” 

Because there was sweat beading on his forehead, Stiles bent and pulled his knife out of his boot, straightening up and looking around. 

“What’s going on?” he asked. 

“I don’t know. It feels like something is watching us.” Isaac rubbed the back of his neck and rolled his shoulders. 

Stiles rolled his eyes when he was facing away. He checked the shed, but Derek and Scott had gone inside it. He had to admit, now that Isaac was acting all twitchy, he started feeling like someone was watching him, too. It was stupid, but he did a slow circle; all he saw were decorative trees, benches, and headstones. 

“There’s nothing out here. If it’s walking around as people we know are dead, it would probably be hidden.”

Isaac didn’t bother answering him. Whatever was making him uneasy had his eyes turning gold, fangs sliding from his gums. 

“Isaac. You’ve gotten so tall,” a vaguely familiar voice said with a _tsk_. 

Isaac spun around and leaped back with a shout. 

Roger Lahey stood before them wearing muddy clothes and a grin. “What, aren’t you happy to see me?” He tilted his head thoughtfully, like he was trying to remember something. “No, I guess not.” He shrugged and swung at Isaac; he didn’t even try to move, just took the punch and hit the dirt in a tangle.

“Hey, ugly,” Stiles said cheerily. “How’d he taste?”

“Bitter,” the ghoul replied. “I really prefer the old, who taste satisfied and resigned, but sometimes you make exceptions.” It stepped over Isaac toward Stiles.

Stiles gripped his knife tighter and stepped back, feeling his way with the heel of his left foot. “Oh, yeah? Exceptions for what?”

“I like werewolves,” he said with a grisly grin. “I didn’t realize there were any here until I got to this…pleasant guy.” He gestured at himself. “He saw his kid heal right in front of his eyes. _I_ knew what that meant, but he didn’t.” 

“I see. So you want to talk to the alpha?” Stiles asked casually. If the ghoul was talking, that gave Scott and Derek time to get out of the shed. 

Isaac had turned so he was watching the ghoul, eyes still glowing gold. He nodded once, slowly, at Stiles to keep talking. 

“Talk?!” The ghoul laughed uproariously. “I don’t want to talk to anyone! I like how werewolves _taste!_ They’re so smug about their superior strength, they forget they will eventually die like the rest of us.”

“Oh, I don’t think you’re in the right place for that. This pack, they know death.” 

The ghoul shrugged. “I suppose. Either way, they’re pretty tasty.” 

“So, what, you’re going to eat them while they’re alive?”

“Um, no. I’m going to kill them, wait a few days—so they get really settled, that’s the best—and _then_ I’m going to eat them.” 

Stiles shot a desperate glance toward the shed and saw the door was closed, blocked with a shovel. 

In the time he’d turned his head back around, the ghoul had gotten around behind him, hands closing around his head. He sucked in a breath and held it, his heart tripping. 

“Now, you? You, I can eat alive.” It sniffed at his neck. “You smell like wendigo! You’re going to have interesting memories, aren’t you?” 

“Probably.” He swung his fist back, plunging the knife into its thigh. 

It yowled and started to twist his head sharply, just before Isaac tackled them both. 

The sound of a door splintering came from their far left, but Isaac was already separating the ghoul from Stiles, snatching his knife and sitting on the ghoul’s chest.

“How do I kill it?” he asked flatly.

“Behead it,” Stiles croaked. His neck felt strained, but at least it wasn’t broken. He sat up and scooted back, hitting legs. He looked up at Scott just before Isaac started cutting. 

The sounds were gruesome and wet, accompanied by the ghoul yowling and thrashing violently. 

When it was done, Isaac tossed Stiles’s knife to him and walked away. 

Stiles watched him go until he hit the gate, where he bent over his knees and started puking.

“I’ll go,” Derek said.

“Okay. I’ll clean up here.” Scott looked at the body and the blood with distaste. “As much as I can.” He looked down at Stiles. “You okay?”

“Yeah, Isaac got him before he could do much damage.” He rubbed his neck. “I think I’m going to go…away from this.” 

“Good idea.” 

Stiles wobbled his way to the gate, where Derek and Isaac were sitting. Isaac looked pale as paper, but he lifted his gaze when Stiles approached. 

“Are you alright?” he asked dully.

“Oh, yeah. I’m good. What about you?”

He shrugged and looked back at his shoes. He was covered in blood from his face down his shirt. 

Stiles sighed and unzipped his top jacket. “Here, you should cover that up until you get home to wash it off. And _soak it_ , okay?” 

Isaac nodded and accepted the jacket without looking up. 

   
**3**

“I’m not really sure what it is that’s happening,” Melissa said quietly. She pushed at her hair and looked over her shoulder. “But _something_ is going on. People have been acting weird, and then it’s like they don’t even know what they’ve done.” 

“What is it they’re doing?” Derek asked.

The pack had gathered in the hospital cafeteria, where Melissa had called them for help. They’d all gathered at and around one table while Melissa ate her lunch and told them what was going on. It was about three days after Thanksgiving. There was no such thing as a _break_ apparently. 

She shook her head. “Dr. Boerio smacked a patient the other day and then seemed to have no memory of why or even of doing it. Then he passed out in the break room and next it was Nurse Clifton. He was supposed to be checking on overnight patients but he went down to the waiting room and started a screaming match with a visitor. They had never met before that.” She tapped her hands against the table impatiently. “Things like that. I don’t understand, and neither do they. Once their little scene is done, it’s like they forget it’s happened.” 

“Huh.” Stiles glanced at Lydia, who shook her head. 

“Sounds like ghosts,” Allison said. “Or some sort of ghost.”

Stiles sighed and pulled his phone out of his pocket and started searching. 

“If it’s a spirit of any kind, we’ll need iron weapons,” Allison said. “I’m going to go call my dad, get some for everyone.” 

“You can’t walk around the hospital with weapons!” Melissa said sharply. 

“We have to stop the ghost thing,” Scott said earnestly. “They don’t have to be like, real weapons. Just pieces of iron.” He looked at Allison. “Right?”

“Right.” She looked at the rest of the group. “We should split up, sort of walk around. You should be able to smell the ghost or whatever it is.”

“What’ll it smell like?” Erica snorted. “Ectoplasm?” 

Allison sighed. “I don’t know—smoke, probably.” She put her phone to her ear and got up to leave the cafeteria while she called Chris.

“Could be a wraith—I guess they’re a sort of mutant ghost things,” Stiles said under his breath. “They fuse together into one big, ugly spirit that goes about getting vengeance.”

“So, what, you think people who’ve died here formed a wraith and started attacking people they had a problem with?”

“Sounds like it.” Stiles sighed, frustrated. “This doesn’t say exactly how to find it, though.” He scoffed and dropped his phone on the table. “It’s hard to sort through the TV show and book references, though. Some of this might not even be real.” 

“So we’re winging it…as usual.” Isaac looked at Scott, who nodded. “Should we split up and start looking then?”

“We should wait for Chris to get here with iron,” Stiles said, but the werewolves all sort of snorted at him. “You think it’s funny now, but remember the wendigo? It kicked your butts until you remembered the _weapons_ specifically made to _kill_ it.” 

“You can’t kill a ghost either way,” Boyd pointed out. 

“Yeah, but we can probably get it out of the hospital.” Stiles grimaced. “Alright. I guess we should split up and start looking, then. Chris and Allison can bring us the weapons when they get them.” 

“Okay. I’ll go with Boyd, Erica can go with Derek, Isaac with Lydia, Allison with Kira, and Jackson with Stiles.” Scott smiled benignly. “Just so no one gets distracted.” 

“Great,” Jackson muttered. 

“We can split up and search separate floors,” Scott said, pretending not to have heard Jackson. That was the only way to deal with him, really. “Kira, you wait here for Allison, okay?”

“Sure. I’ll just keep Mel company,” she said, smiling at Melissa. 

Stiles looked at Derek and grimaced.

Derek smirked and tilted Stiles’s chin up with his fingertip, dropping a light, friendly kiss on his mouth. 

“That was seriously disappointing.”

“Later,” Derek said, gesturing at Erica to come with him. 

Stiles sighed and got up. “We should check the top floor, and the rest can get the ones in the middle,” he muttered. He left the cafeteria without pausing to see if Jackson was following him—with any luck, Jackson would go play Candy Crush in an empty hall or something, and Stiles could search the upper floors. 

“You don’t even know what to look _for_ ,” Jackson pointed out. 

Damn. He was following. “Well, anyone who looks possessed or like they’re acting out of character. Or, if the wraith is just floating around, probably some sort of ghostly vision in the hallway,” he said dryly. 

Jackson scoffed. 

Stiles hesitated in front of an elevator. “I think I’ll just take the stairs.”

“Why?” he demanded, irritated. 

“Because in literally every horror movie, people get trapped in the elevator with the vengeful spirit.” Stiles shook his head and looked around for the stairwell. “Aha.” 

“I’m not taking the stairs,” Jackson muttered. 

“Fine, take the elevator. Test the ghosts.” He waved his hands over his head and stomped into the stairwell. He didn’t really think the ghost—wraith—was going to be in the stairs or the elevator—there were more people on the lower floors—but Scott wanted him to check, so he would check. 

He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to check without a super-sniffer, of course, but he would manage. He always did. 

He started climbing the stairs and shivered, cursing the hospital for not bothering to heat the stairs. There were sick people all over the hospital, shouldn’t they be kept warm?

Of course, the sick people probably wouldn’t be trekking up the stairs to—whatever floor he was heading to, but the point was that it was freezing. 

He rubbed his hands over his arms and pulled his sleeves over his fingers as he walked. 

“What am I supposed to look for, a guy in a sheet?” he muttered, yanking his phone out of his pocket impatiently. Nothing he’d found in his two-minute search had said anything about what the wraith _looked_ like. He assumed that was because they looked like whatever they felt which, according to the research, was rage. 

“Wrath, actually,” a woman’s voice said, startling him. 

He turned his head. “What?” There was no one behind him. Because of course there wasn’t. He turned forward again and jumped.

A person stood a couple steps above him—he said person because the shape was vaguely human, but there were no clear identifying features. Just a black, smoky shape. 

“Wrath. We prefer the word _wrath._ Rage sounds so childish.” The voice wasn’t masculine or feminine, but somehow both at the same time, and neither. It echoed like it was coming from every side, but it made no move toward him. 

“Wrath, then. Is there a reason you’re feeling wrathful?” he asked, group texting the pack for help without taking his eyes off the wraith. 

That was a bad question to ask—its face became clearer, only it looked like six or seven faces all fighting for dominance at once, screaming things at him. “Cheated!” “Took my car!” “-my dog-” “-severed-” “-got me _fired!_ ” 

The air got colder, until Stiles could see his breath. He had to lock his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. “Okay, so you’re all pretty mad. Why the hospital?”

“We died here!” they all shrieked so loudly he had to clap his hands over his ears. “We can’t leave!” 

Behind him, at the bottom of the stairs, someone started banging on the door—a cloud of black smoke covered it; the wraith had moved to block it. 

Stiles started running up the stairs. If the wraith was going to block the door where someone was trying to get in, then he was going to get out another door. 

“We just want to use you for a bit!” the wraith screamed.

It was impossible to judge where it was from its voice—it sounded like it was right beside him, but when he looked, it was still blocking the door from whoever was trying to get in. 

“No thanks! Not for rent!” he called back, bolting to the first door he saw—the wraith appeared in front of him, blocking his way and turning the air to ice again. He jerked away before it could touch him and ran up to the next landing. 

“Stiles?!” a voice called from below. 

“Up here!” he yelled. He saw a door fly open further up the stairs and ran for it desperately. He catapulted through it and slammed the door behind him, gasping. He tensed all over when he felt a breeze slither under the collar of his jacket. 

He turned around and closed his eyes immediately. “Fuck,” he breathed. The damn wraith had led him up to the roof, which was the perfect place for it to corner him and possess him. Or scare him and make him fall right off, which was another very possible thing. 

He shook his hands out and grabbed the doorknob, only to jerk his hand back with a shout. The metal was so cold it burned, leaving his fingers numb. He swallowed with a click and looked around. 

There wasn’t much to see, except the usual machinery to be seen on a roof. He wasn’t quite sure what he’d been looking for, except maybe bird shit, the quantities of which were bountiful. 

Behind him, the air gathered hard and cold in a focused point, so he did the only sensible thing he could and ran for one of the whirring blocks of machinery. 

It seemed to be some sort of cooling system—or maybe Stiles had no idea what he was talking about and it was really a gigantic case for a flux capacitor and the hospital was a time machine in disguise. 

Someone had left tools scattered on the other side of it, where Stiles was crouching. He grabbed up a wrench and clutched it to his chest, breathing so hard his nose was starting to burn.

That horrible frigid air moved closer, boxing him in and shaping into the black smoke. When it got close enough, he swung the wrench at it, cursing himself for being stupid at the same time that he was hoping it would startle it enough for him to run.

To his surprise, the wraith screamed and separated for a moment—he shot to his feet and ran for the door, lugging the wrench with him. It must have been made of iron. 

By the time he’d made it to the door, though, the wraith had reformed and materialized (is that the word, when it really isn’t made of anything but smoke?) in front of him again.

He backpedaled, almost losing his balance.

“Just let us take you, just for a while. You might like it,” it echoed. It turned what was probably its face toward the door. “We could punish the blond one for you. The one you dislike. The one who left you alone. Just let us take you and we’ll do it for you. No one would blame you.” It crept closer to him, a cold tendril of its smoke crawling over his cheek. 

He pressed his mouth closed and slashed the wrench through its midsection again, turning to run back for the tools. Maybe he could use them to get that door open. 

The wraith let out a wail, so loud and high that he almost dropped the wrench to cover his ears; he tightened his grip around the handle and used his foot to sift through the scatter of tools. He was displeased to see that nothing looked helpful. 

Something banged through the sound of the wraith’s wailing, but before Stiles could look up to see what it was, icy air flowed over him in thick waves like smoke and threw him, right over the edge of the building.

There was a moment of horrible freefalling, his heart up in his throat—possibly three feet above his throat, actually. Something caught the back of his jacket, wrenching him to a violent stop and choking him on the collar. He hung there for a terrifying moment, suspended above—he chanced opening an eye to see how high he was and decided it was high enough and squeezed his eyes shut again. 

His savior, as far as he could tell, was a disembodied arm reeling him back over the edge. 

Once he could reach, he scrabbled at the ledge, terrified they would let go before he was back on firm ground.

“Stop squirming!” Jackson snarled, giving him one last good yank and sending him tumbling back onto the roof. 

Stiles could only manage to get to his knees, retching and shivering with terror. 

Around him was the pack, blocking him and Jackson off from the wraith as they listened to Chris Argent’s explanation for killing it for good. 

Stiles’s hand was bleeding around the wrench, he’d clenched it so tight. 

“You’re going to get an infection,” Jackson muttered, yanking it from his grip. 

“Thanks,” Stiles managed sarcastically. 

Jackson just nodded and then proceeded to ignore him. It was how they worked. 

 

**4**

“You know, I would like one week off.” Stiles waved his hands to emphasize how not cool any of this was. “Just one week where nothing bothers us. Why are we baddie patrol, by the way? Is there no one else who can take care of this stuff?”

Scott stared at him. Then he bolstered himself. “You can sit this one out, if you’re tired. But Lydia is studying right now, and I figured you would be able to find this stuff faster if I caught you after you had a full night’s sleep.”

Derek was still in the bedroom, sleeping off the mounds of leftovers he’d consumed the previous night.

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Stiles claimed, but that was a lie, because he was already looking around for his laptop. “Okay, tell me again.” He opened up a document so he could type out a list of what was going on for something to look back on when he was deep in research. It was a process.

“People are drowning,” Scott said quickly, eager to spill while Stiles was in a helpful mood. “All in the same place. Their bodies are being recovered really easily, except their eyes are missing and they’re bruised in a few places.” He grimaced. “The bruises are mostly on their arms or shoulders.”

Stiles huffed. “Do the victims have anything in common?”

“Not really? One was a twenty-seven-year-old guy who worked at Starbucks, the second was a seventeen-year-old girl just starting college, and the third was thirty-eight with four kids.” He lifted his hands. “It seems really random.”

“And the cause of death was drowning for sure?” Stiles asked doubtfully. He tapped his fingers on the edge of his laptop. 

“Yeah.” Scott frowned. “Boyd’s coming with me to go check out the lake where it’s happening, try to get a scent.” 

Stiles sighed. “You should take Erica, too, maybe Isaac. Remember the ghoul?” he added severely when Scott looked like he might protest. 

“Right. We’ll go. Let me know if you get anything.” 

“Will do.” Stiles sighed and started the search. What wanted to drown people but not eat anything more than their eyes? 

He’d never heard of mermaids eating people’s _eyes_ when they drowned them. Maybe that was something that the lore missed. There always seemed to be _something_ the lore missed. 

Derek shuffled to the bathroom an hour later and emerged freshly showered and brushed, leaning over the back of the couch to see what Stiles was looking for. “Kelpies?” he asked cautiously. 

“I think so. This says that it would devour people, but that’s not what’s happening.”

“Kelpies eat souls drenched in fear,” Derek said wisely. “Also eyes.” 

“Ew, what? Why?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never asked.”

“Smartass,” Stiles muttered, flapping a hand back at him. Tendons popped and crackled as he moved his shoulder.

“How long have you been sitting there like that?” he demanded. 

“Uh, maybe an hour.” He stretched his shoulders. “Well, anyway, this doesn’t say how to kill a kelpie, so it’s probably moot. I’m going to go shower.” He ran a hand through his hair, grimacing. 

“Okay. You want me to keep looking, see if I can figure out how to kill them?”

Stiles smiled and stood, reeling Derek in by the hem of his shirt. He kissed him with an exaggerated “Mmmmmm,” and leaned back. “Yes, I would appreciate that so much. Be right back. Thanks.”

Derek was still flushed and flustered when Stiles left the room, which was definitely a win. 

 

It took them until evening to find something solid about killing kelpies, which was _so_ typical Stiles thought he might laugh about it. They met the rest of the pack at the lake with an assortment of iron pokers. 

“Guess what?” he called when he could see them. “Kelpies are fey creatures.” 

“So?” Jackson prompted, putting his hands in his pockets. 

“So, iron,” Erica said, eyeing the weapons. “Right?”

“Correct, show her what she’s won, Mr. Hale,” Stiles said grandly.

Derek presented her with an iron crowbar unceremoniously. “Stab it.” 

“They’re really dangerous in the water, but with so many of us around here, they’ll surface soon.” Stiles waved at Derek to pass out the iron weapons. They were more prepared this time for the fight, at least. “They like to show you something from your memories, something you want, so keep that in mind. They’re going to try to lure you in and drown you.”

“I thought that was mermaids,” Kira said doubtfully.

“Right you are! Unlike mermaids, the kelpies are going to eat your soul and then your eyeballs.”

“Oh.” 

“So let’s play this safe, guys.”

“That means the humans need to stand back,” Scott said. “We can smell them, so even if they look like a person to us, they’ll still smell like lake water.” 

Stiles’s mouth twisted. “I’m in no hurry to approach killer water horses, don’t worry.”

Allison didn’t look as agreeable, but she stepped back beside Stiles anyway. 

Lydia followed easily. “We have weapons, too, just in case, right?”

“Yep.” Stiles passed them out. “They can get on land and I have no desire to drown, have my soul sucked out, or my eyes eaten.” 

“You’re awfully chipper tonight,” Lydia observed. 

Stiles gestured grandly at Derek, who was frowning in concentration. 

Allison cooed and started, “That’s so-”

“That ass makes me happy,” Stiles sighed wistfully.

“—sweet, you’re a pig, never mind.” She knocked her shoulder against his, though. “You’re such a liar, you know that? You’re so stuck on him it’s sickening.”

“I know, be quiet, he might hear you.”

“So? You think he doesn’t know?”

“I think if you distract him, he’s going to get eaten.” Stiles crossed his arms and watched the werewolves fan out, circling the lake separately to try to lure the kelpie—or kelpies, Stiles suspected there was more than one—to the surface. 

On the far right side of the lake, he could see Derek peering closer to the water, then looking back toward Stiles, like he was checking he hadn’t moved. Doofus.

Luring kelpies was apparently more difficult than luring, say, a dog. Allison and Lydia had retreated to Allison’s car to warm up and check with Chris and Deaton to see if Stiles had missed something after twenty or so minutes. 

Stiles was starting to suspect there _was_ something the victims had in common, something they hadn’t thought of.

They were all human. 

Swearing, he walked closer to the edge of the lake, bringing his fire poker up like a bat. “Come on, you stupid thing. I want to go home and eat.” He kicked at the water. “Hello? Anyone there?”

Around him, he could hear the pack converging, irritated at him for getting close to the water. They hadn’t gotten close enough that he could hear them reprimanding him yet. 

He waved a hand over his shoulder. “Stay back, it’s fine, I think it wants a human. Just make sure it doesn’t take me.” He sighed deeply and bent down, putting his fingers in the frigid water for just a second—maybe it needed to smell him through the water? “Come on! What is with this thing? If it took this long every time, I don’t see how it managed to capture anyone at all.” 

His head snapped up when he heard something shift in the water ahead of him. “Okay, now we’re getting there,” he breathed. He tensed, his hand clenching tight around the poker. 

What rose out of the water was not a creepy fey water horse, but his mother, wearing dirt-stained jeans and a blue t-shirt, her hands dirty from working in the garden. She smiled when she met his gaze. 

“I’m not an _idiot._ Wow, you’re terrible at this,” Stiles said, only to sputter on water. He jerked, shocked, and found himself standing in water almost too deep to keep his head above, shivering hard and almost numb. 

On shore, the pack was calling out for him to come back. He must have been walking out the whole time he’d thought he was taunting the kelpie. Maybe he was an idiot. 

“O-okay, m-maybe not,” he stuttered, his teeth chattering now that he could feel the cold. The poker in his hand felt like it was dragging him down.

The kelpie that looked like his mother smiled even wider, her grin splitting her cheeks up grotesquely until she was horse-shaped again. 

Stiles started backpedaling, gasping and trying to keep his head above water; he heard Derek shout his name just before the kelpie wrapped what felt like ropes around his arms and yanked him under. 

He lost his grip on the poker and kicked out with his legs, hitting the kelpie’s stomach, but it just kept dragging him deeper, resistant to his struggles. 

The ropes on his arms turned out to be coarse appendages that were coming from the kelpie’s back, like thin, wavy wings. They tightened until his arms started to sting, going numb, and kept him too close to fight. He slammed his head forward, right onto its nose, and nearly knocked himself unconscious. His lungs were burning already, chest heaving as he struggled to hold his breath. The kelpie snorted bubbles into his face and kept swimming down.

It was too dark to see, but he knew he had his knife in his boot, if he could just reach it. He curled his legs up to his body, shuddering when the kelpie snarled in his ear. His numb fingers closed around the handle and yanked. A stunning, hot bloom of pain against his forearm alerted him to the fact that he’d cut himself.

The kelpie’s chest vibrated as it started growling, teeth clicking loudly near his ear. 

He twisted his wrist and sliced at the rope; a hoof connected with his leg when he cut, the kelpie giving a shriek of pain and jerking away. Bubbles flew out of his mouth when he yelped in pain. His head felt like it was going to explode, his chest was burning, his heart pounding, but he was free and he had to swim. 

It was too dark to figure out which way was up, so he just started kicking and hoped he was going in the right direction, his strokes becoming sloppy and frantic as he started losing consciousness. 

Something grabbed his ankle, yanking him back—down? Up? He wasn’t sure—but he was too close to the edge to fight; he just went limp and closed his eyes. At least he would be unconscious when the kelpie took his soul. He could even remember his mother’s smile more clearly now, thanks to that little illusion it’d offered him from his memories. 

 

When he woke up, he was in the hospital. He was so used to waking up there that the only part he was confused about was how he’d ended up there. The bruises along his arms and the stitched gash on his right forearm was enough of a reminder. 

Derek and Erica were fast asleep in the chair and recliner that were in the corners.

Scott came in when Stiles started stirring. “You’re up!” he blurted, way too loudly.

Derek jerked awake a second before Erica.

“Hey, guys,” Stiles said. His voice sounded terrible. “Anyone have any water? I’m really thirsty.”

“You’re never going near a large body of water again,” Derek griped, scrambling to his side to help him take a sip from the water by his bedside. 

“Ugh, yeah, that was terrible. I don’t think I _want_ to go swimming again.” He sipped gratefully. “Okay, what happened?”

“There were four of them,” Scott said with a grimace. “While we were dispatching the other three, you were getting lured in by the fourth one.”

Stiles shook his head. “I didn’t notice.”

“We only noticed when you were waist deep. We didn’t want it to notice us coming after you and attack you, so we had Erica and Boyd going in from behind while we tried to get you to come back to us on your own.” Scott looked at Erica with a grateful smile.

“You puked water all over me,” she said. “And punched me. Twice.” 

“I thought you were the kelpie,” Stiles said meekly. “Probably. I wasn’t really…awake.”

“Oh, I know. You were limp as a doll until I got you to the surface. Then you started freaking out.”

“Good instincts,” Derek said darkly. “Too late.”

“Hey, I got away from the kelpie on my own.” Stiles was too tired to really argue the point, though. “So how bad is it? Can I go now that I’m awake?”

Derek scowled.

“You have a femur bone contusion from where it kicked you, they’ve been giving you oxygen for a few hours, and you’ve got that cut on your arm…” Scott grimaced. “You’re not allowed to leave until tomorrow, actually. But your dad is here.”

“Oh, perfect. How freaked out is he?”

“Haven’t you been meaning to visit him for a while?” Scott asked innocently.

Stiles groaned and dropped his head back. He smiled a little when Derek took his hand. “It’s fine, isn’t it? This isn’t that big of a deal.”

“Wrong,” Erica said promptly. “You almost died. You’re going to have to deal with us hovering for a little while. Speaking of, Isaac and Boyd are probably sneaking some food in right now.”

“Food?” Stiles asked, leaning forward.

“Breakfast,” Erica confirmed.

“But Mom’s going to bring you your breakfast tray in a few minutes, so you can’t have any,” Scott said smugly.

Stiles stuck his tongue out at him. Hospital food was not his idea of fun. But… “Wait, breakfast?”

“I said it’s been a few hours,” Scott said defensively. He pointed at the window, where sunlight was leaking in.

Stiles frowned. “Huh.” He patted his leg. “So, what does one do about a bone contusion?” he asked, mimicking the uncertain way Scott had said _contusion_. 

“Ice it, rest it, stretch it, and massage it,” Melissa McCall said as she entered the room. She was carrying a covered tray and looking steely-eyed. “Sit the bed up, please, Derek,” she said sweetly, before snapping her gaze toward Stiles. “You’re going to eat all of this.”

“All of what?” he asked warily. “I remember the eggs you brought before. They were terrible. There was some red substance on them.”

“I think that was ketchup,” Scott said helpfully. 

“You’re eating all of it,” Melissa reiterated, “if you want to get out of here by tonight.” 

Stiles’s eyes widened. “Yes, ma’am,” he said instantly. 

Derek snorted.  
 

 

**5**

The tree was probably lopsided, Stiles thought, tilting his head. Or maybe the ornaments were making it heavy on one side. The floor could have been uneven. One of those was probably the answer, or at least that was the answer he was going to tell Scott and Isaac, who had very proudly delivered the live tree to Stiles and Derek’s apartment, flushed with success, that very morning. 

“Isn’t it perfect?” Scott asked, standing beside Stiles and beaming. “It looks so great.”

Isaac nodded. “Perfect.”

They looked far too pleased for Stiles to shoot them down, so he flashed a warning look at Derek, who’d opened his mouth to say something, and said, “I agree! It’s the perfect tree. Thank you guys for bringing it and helping us decorate.” He clapped his hands together. “So, don’t you have to go put up Scott’s tree now?”

“Isaac’s is next,” Scott said, flinging an arm around Isaac and Stiles’s shoulders each. “Then we’re invading Mom’s house before we do mine. Kira’s picking out our tree.” 

“I see.” Stiles hoped Kira had better luck than Scott had, but he actually suspected Kira had helped out with their tree, so there was probably no hope. “Well, you better get going.” He clapped his hands. “We’ve got presents to wrap to put under our new tree.” 

“Awesome. See you later, man. Bye, Derek!” Scott passed out hugs, accidentally getting Derek twice in his excitement—maybe not accidentally—before ducking out with Isaac. 

Derek tilted his head, probably listening until they were down the hall. Once he was satisfied, he turned to Stiles. “The tree is going to fall over.”

“It’s already sickly.” Stiles covered his face. “This is why we should have gone last week when I told you to!”

“You were working and I was helping your father fix the front steps at his house?”

“There had to be a day…” Stiles took a deep breath and shook his head. “Well, it doesn’t matter. It only has to be up a week and a half.” 

“If we take it down on Christmas, he’s going to get his feelings hurt,” Derek pointed out. “But I think New Years’ Eve is good.”

“ _New Years?_ ” Stiles lowered his voice, because the tree wobbled. “I don’t think it’ll _last_ until New Years’.” 

“Let’s see if we can fix it. I think maybe if we prop something under one side…a thin book or…a magazine…” Derek pushed his sleeves up—literally—and got down on the floor, crawling toward the tree like a man approaching a sleeping tiger. 

Stiles stayed back to appreciate the view. 

Derek could rock sweatpants just as well as he could those tight jeans he favored. 

“Are you going to help me, or are you just going to stand there staring at my ass?” he asked, muffled. 

“Well, I thought about just standing here, but I guess I can help. What do you need?” He leaned forward, tipping his head. 

“Something about this thick.” He stuck his arm out behind him, fingers held about an inch and a half apart. “If we have anything.”

“I’ll go check.” He poked his head into the kitchen and swiped a National Inquirer off the counter. “Here, try this.” 

Derek held his hand out, so Stiles set the magazine against his palm until he took it. “Okay, that should work. Just…maybe don’t walk too close to it.”

“Still unsteady?”

“No, but if you bump into it, it’s going to fall over.” He stood up and kissed him quickly.

“Hey, you could bump into it. I’m not the only one who bumps into things!” Stiles protested, leaning back.

Derek scoffed. “You’ve lived here for a year and a half and you still bump into the corners of the walls.” He kissed Stiles again, before he could argue. “You bump into the same part of the wall every time you turn the corner. There is always a bruise on your shoulder where you hit it.” He slid his hands up to cup Stiles’s shoulders, exactly where the bruise was. 

“Well, that’s just because I’m naturally unbalanced.”

Derek pressed a kiss to Stiles’s forehead. It would have been sweet, had he not followed it up with, “Yes, you are.”

“Jerk.” He slapped Derek’s shoulder and slid out of his arms. “Well, let’s go make some cookies. For Santa,” he added with an impish grin. “The tree put me in the mood for Santa cookies.”

“Do we have to save them until Christmas?” Derek asked warily.

“Ha! If you think they’ll last that long, you’re delusional.” 

Before they made it to the kitchen, however, Stiles’s phone started ringing. He glanced at Derek, exasperated. “How much do you want to bet that’s some sort of creature emergency?”

“I don’t take sucker bets,” Derek said, picking up the phone. He frowned at it. “It’s Boyd.”

“You can answer it.” Stiles leaned against the counter, crossing his arms. He wanted to be annoyed, but he couldn’t help getting nervous every time something happened. 

“Hello?” Derek snorted. “Yes, it’s me. Stiles is right here. Scott? He just left.” He looked at Stiles, his eyes widening. “Vampires?”

 

Since vampires weren’t just magical animals, Scott wanted to try to reason with them, talk them out of killing indiscriminately—they’d learned that vampires didn’t have to kill, that they could drink from multiple people and simply close the wounds instead of killing or turning them when they bit them—but the vampires were on a blood high and in no mood to slow down just because an uppity werewolf decided to tell them they were trespassing. 

Because it always did, it came down to a fight. Thankfully, Lydia and Stiles had done their research and came prepared, tossing each pack mate a stake made of linden ash branches as the vampires rushed them.

There were about fifteen of them; of the fifteen, two young-looking girls hung back, looking terrified, until one of the older males shouted at them as he was throwing Erica across the lot. 

They were in the parking lot of an abandoned K-Mart. Because _that_ was the place to have epic supernatural showdowns.

Stiles felt that YA writers everywhere were rolling over in their sleep, sensing a disturbance. 

He swung his stake out at one of the vampires that got too close, fending him off until Boyd got there and rammed the stake through his heart. 

To Stiles’s dismay, the vampire did not explode into a pile of ashes, but simply collapsed to the ground like a normal dead person. This was unfortunate, because it meant cleanup. 

“Stay back,” Boyd grunted, turning to meet another rushing vampire. 

“Yeah, trying to, dude,” he snapped, stepping back and bumping into one of the younger girls. He lifted his stake, jumping. “Hey,” he said shakily, realizing that both the younger girls and one of the older ones had surrounded him. “Okay, I know you don’t want to kill anyone. Why don’t you just leave now, and no one else has to die?”

“If we made that kind of decision, do you think we’d be here?” the girl with the brown hair demanded. “We don’t want to do this, but we can’t disobey our maker,” she hissed. Her eyes glittered dangerously in the low light from the streetlamps. 

“Speak for yourself,” the older one snapped. “I’ll come back for you later,” she scoffed, disgusted. “And you two, watch him,” she added. She lunged at Stiles so quickly he tried to scamper back but couldn’t make it; her hands slammed into his chest, knocking him to the ground so hard his head cracked against the concrete with a sick crunching sort of noise. 

He vaguely heard her laughing as she launched herself off his chest and back toward where the werewolves were fighting. 

His head felt wrong. He couldn’t make himself sit up, instead blinking at the unsteady lights dancing above him. His breath was coming in hard gasps. Pressure was building behind his eyes, but he couldn’t figure out why. Blood started matting his hair and soaking the back of his shirt as his vision popped with stars. 

“Cassie!” the blonde girl gasped, leaning down over him. Her features looked strange to Stiles, twisted and uneven, wrong. “Cassie, I can’t let him die—I don’t want to kill anyone,” she chattered tearfully. On a hitching gasp she leaned in even closer, staring into his eyes. “His eyes—why do his eyes look like that? Cassie, his pupils are two different sizes!” 

“Give him some,” the other girl said quietly. “I’ll watch for David. Hurry up before he notices!” 

Something warm pressed against Stiles’s mouth, but he was losing consciousness too fast to understand. Nothing made sense anymore. He could hear someone shouting his name—that seemed to be happening to him a lot, maybe he was cursed with bad luck or something—but all he noticed was that something was rolling down his throat, so he swallowed before he closed his eyes. 

 

Someone grabbed his shoulders and shook him. “Stiles? Jesus Christ, guys, he’s been unconscious the whole time, someone could have fucking killed him!” 

“His heart’s beating, I can hear it. It’s beating hard, too.” 

“Check for bites,” Lydia said sharply. “Make sure they didn’t feed on him.”

Someone yanked at his shirt, exposing his neck and the bends of his elbows. “I don’t see any.” 

“There’s blood on the back of his shirt. Check his head!” 

Stiles was finally conscious enough to swat at whoever was holding him, mumbling in protest. “Stop,” he grumbled. “Stop, stop, I’m okay.” 

Derek yanked him up off the ground and against his chest. “What _happened?_ ” he shouted. He kept running his hands over the back of Stiles’s head, which was tender and stiff with blood, but there didn’t seem to be an injury. 

“I tried to talk sense into bloodsuckers,” Stiles muttered. “They knocked me over and…” He frowned, freeing one arm to press fingers to the back of his head. For whatever reason, he’d expected to feel a give where it was tender. Of course, there wasn’t. Just his hair and skin and the skull under it. “And I guess I passed out.” He looked over Derek’s shoulder. “What happened?”

Derek’s face was currently pressed into Stiles’s neck, so Scott explained from behind him.

“We had to kill a few of them, but the rest—once the oldest guy got staked, the rest of them looked to the oldest woman, and she told them they were leaving, so they did.” Scott looked over his shoulder. There was a streak of blood smeared over his face, along with an expression of distaste. “We’ll do cleanup. Derek, why don’t you take Stiles to the hospital?”

“I don’t need the hospital,” he said quickly. 

“You were passed out,” Scott said sternly. “For more than a few minutes. That means something serious happened.” 

Derek’s arms tightened around his waist. “You have to go, okay. I don’t think anything’s wrong, but it would make me feel better if you went to get an x-ray anyway.” 

“Yeah, alright. Is everyone okay?”

“Nothing they can’t heal from.” Derek stood up, pulling Stiles to his feet. He started swearing in a low, steady voice when Stiles wobbled.

“Derek, I’m fine.”

Lydia and Allison looked doubtful and worried. “I’ll drive,” Lydia said. “Head injuries are no joke, Stiles.” 

“I’ll come with, just in case any of the vampires are lingering.” Allison hitched her crossbow across her shoulders and led the way across the lot, where the cars were waiting.

Stiles glanced at the rest of the pack—they were bloodstained, their clothes ripped, but they looked otherwise intact—before letting Derek lead him to the car. 

Three hours later, they returned home, where Derek stripped Stiles of his bloodied shirt and jeans almost as soon as they were in the door.

“I told you nothing was wrong with me,” he muttered. 

Derek just grunted and lifted him into his arms. “Are you hungry?” he demanded. “I’ll make you some soup.”

“If you want.” Stiles figured the soup was really Derek’s way of trying to take care of him, so he decided not to complain about being carted around like a delicate Victorian flower. “I could eat.”

“Okay.” Derek took him to the bedroom and set him gently on the bed, fussing with the pillows and blanket. “You’re never leaving the house again,” he declared. “How am I supposed to-” he threw his hands up and left the room.

Stiles put his hands in his lap. Truth be told, he felt terrific. The tenderness had gone from his head—he must have been more shocked than anything when he actually hit the ground, because there was barely a bump that definitely didn’t warrant him passing out or seeing stars—and he felt wide awake, clear-headed. He could have gotten up and cleaned the whole house, or maybe done a few laps; his heart was pounding with what felt like anticipation, though he wasn’t sure of what. 

Derek returned with a bowl of soup minutes later. “How am I supposed to live to see thirty if you keep giving me heart attacks?” he demanded, finishing the conversation as if he hadn’t left.

Stiles accepted the bowl he was offered with a murmur of thanks. “I don’t mean to. I’ve been on a bad streak lately. You have to admit, it’s odd for me to keep getting my ass handed to me. Since October!” He started eating, suddenly ravenous. 

“You’ve got to stay back next time something happens.” Derek settled on the edge of the bed, fingers pressing into his temples. “You have to. What if next time-?” He shook his head. “There was blood on your shirt. There isn’t a cut, but it’s your blood.” He lifted his hands. 

Stiles leaned forward. “Come up here. I’m not going to die.” There was a very real chance he _could_ have, every time, but Derek was clearly distraught, so he had to reassure him somehow. “If you want, next time there’s a creature problem, I’ll hang back. I’ll stay here until you guys are done. I’ll give everyone weapons and Lydia can keep me company.” 

Derek nodded, scooting up the bed until he was beside him, pulling Stiles’s arm up and around his shoulders. He pressed his cheek against Stiles’s chest and stayed there while he ate. It wasn’t a bad way to spend the rest of the night.

 

   
**+1**

The thing about Beacon Hills was that sitting out was sort of a non-option when you knew what was really going on. So on the night after New Years’ day when a group of rogue hunters rolled into town shooting up the faeries the McCall pack had an alliance with, and then started on the pack themselves, Stiles wasn't to be left out. 

Chris tried to reason with them and got shot in the arm for his efforts, so that turned out to be a bust. 

“Stay _back!_ ” Derek snarled when Stiles darted in to help. 

“There are more of them than there are of you!” he snapped, jumping back when one of the hunters lifted a gun on him.

Derek roared and tackled the hunter. 

While he was distracted, another hunter took his place and grabbed Stiles’s arm, yanking him off balance. Stiles used the hunter’s grip on him to keep his footing while he threw a punch straight on at his face. Bone crunched under Stiles's knuckles 

He let go, stumbling back and grabbing his nose, which was bleeding.

Stiles ran at a hunter that reared up behind Derek, wielding a knife. They collided and fell to the ground in a tangled heap. 

The hunter turned and slammed the hilt of her knife across Stiles’s cheek, dazing him and knocking him over. He grabbed a handful of her shirt and yanked her back down before she could get back up, struggling to keep ahold of her.

Derek turned around and grabbed her, flinging her across the lot. “I said stay back,” he growled.

“Yeah, well, she would have stabbed you in the back if I had,” Stiles snapped, standing up and rubbing his cheek. 

Derek shook his head and turned to meet another hunter—how many _were_ there?—before she could shoot him, swiping the gun out of her hands and lunging at her.

Scott gave a surprised shout of pain, so Stiles ran to help. He had a blackened cut on his cheek, his eye swelling as the wolfsbane poisoned him. 

Stiles used his forearm to block the next swing from the hunter and slammed the heel of his hand under his jaw, knocking his head back; his teeth made an audible _click_. He rammed his knee into the hunter’s crotch, knocking him to his knees. While he was groaning, Stiles bent over him and grabbed the knife, tossing it to Scott. 

“Might need that.”

“Right.” He backed away, shaking his head as the swelling worsened. 

Stiles pressed the heel of his boot down hard on the hunter’s hand when he started moving. “Just stay down,” he said. 

Kira let out a sharp scream—honestly, it sounded like more rage than fear—and Scott turned, bolting to help her. 

Stiles looked over his shoulder when Erica called out to him; she ran up to him and kicked the hunter hard in the head. 

“Don’t just stand there, one of them is going to sneak up on you,” she snapped. Her shoulder was bleeding heavily. 

“Did you get shot?” he demanded. 

“Yeah, but I don’t think it’s a wolfsbane bullet; it doesn’t look poisoned.” She pushed the shoulder of her shirt aside to look at the wound.

Stiles swallowed thickly. “Ugh, yeah, it doesn’t look like wolfsbane. You have to get the bullet out though.” 

“I-” she spun around with a roar, knocking a shotgun out of the hands of a hunter that had approached them. 

Stiles stepped back—he couldn’t do anything to the people with the guns and felt like he was more useful for the hunters with knives—and turned around, looking for the others.

Jackson was grappling with a hunter that had a gun pressed against his chest, wrestling his hand away from the trigger; two feet from them, Isaac was on the ground, panting and holding his hand up weakly while a hunter stood over him with a rifle.

Before Stiles could try to do something stupid, Boyd tackled the hunter with a vicious snarl. The gun went off, a bullet plowing into Isaac’s stomach and making him cry out. 

Stiles ran to help, grabbing the gun from the hunter while she and Boyd fought. He turned to Isaac, who was flat on his back and panting, face soaked with sweat. 

A dull, thick sounding crack came from behind them; Isaac’s face went gray and Stiles—Stiles turned slowly and found Boyd, just as gray-faced as Isaac, under the hunter with his hands around her limp neck, looking stunned. 

“I—I was just trying to—” there was a knife sticking out of the right side of his chest, half buried in his flesh. “I tried to-?”

“She was going to kill us anyway,” Stiles said firmly. “Get that knife out of your chest.”

Boyd rolled her off him and scrambled back. “It’s easier to kill things that aren’t…really…human,” he said quietly. 

“Come help Isaac,” Stiles said. “Take the knife out,” he added sharply. 

Boyd gulped and yanked the knife out of his chest, dropping it before he turned to help Isaac. 

Stiles stepped back. He knew that they would probably have to kill the hunters—he’d hoped that an ass-kicking would encourage them to leave, but it wasn’t like they were hesitating to try to kill the pack. 

He didn’t realize he was still backing away until he bumped into someone. He jumped and turned around, lifting his arms to defend himself. 

He hadn’t even made a fist when something sharp pierced his chest. He looked down in shock and stared, confused, at the handle of the knife sticking out of his chest, right above his heart. 

“ ** _No!_** ” Derek’s howl rose above the chaos. 

All around him, shouts rose, agonized howls and screams of his name but all he could really hear were the helpless little gasps he was making, sputtering as he stumbled to his knees. Blackness rolled into his vision like a fog, the pain in his chest fading to a pinpoint.

 

“ _Stiles. Stiles, you have to stop. It’s okay. Stop. Stop!_ ”

“ _Stay back. I’ll do it._ ”

“ _If you touch him, I will kill you. I don’t care! Get away from him! He’s fine. He’s fine!_ ”

The arguing voices of his pack brought him back to the surface. He was standing in the middle of the lot where they’d been fighting the hunters, breathing heavily through his mouth, staring straight ahead. He blinked and licked his lips, found them slick with something that tasted so good he got distracted by cleaning it off his face. It wasn’t until he lifted his hands that he realized it was blood.

He was covered in it, could smell it like someone had stuck a rag soaked in it right under his face. It smelled delicious, which didn’t make sense. He could hear something fluttering, a lot of somethings, like a large group of flying insects flapping their tiny wings too close to his ear. He focused on the noise until it became a loud, wet sort of thudding; heartbeats, coming from every direction.

“Stiles?” Scott asked very quietly.

He turned his head sharply, looking for him, and discovered that he was standing next to a pile of bodies; the hunters, all dead, their skin pasty and sick looking.

Allison was standing about ten feet away, her crossbow aimed at him—or it would have been, had Derek not been standing in front of it, growling nonstop, like an idling engine. 

“He’s fine,” Derek insisted. “He’s _fine._ Put it down.” 

Stiles looked at his hands again. Lifted them to touch his face, his teeth. Two sharp fangs dug into his thumbs where his canine teeth should have been. 

He remembered with a sick jolt the knife in his chest and looked down, but the knife was gone. His shirt was ripped and bloodstained, but the wound in his chest was just a pale pink line now, all but gone. 

“Derek?” he managed. “Scott? What…did I do?” he asked weakly. 

At the sound of his voice, everyone around him jumped, save for the dead hunters, of course, and finally looked at him. 

“You _saved_ us,” Derek said firmly, shooting Allison another dark look. “He could have killed any one of us, we didn’t even notice him, but he went around us.”

“He was a vampire in a blood rage,” she said shortly. “He’s my friend, too, but I didn’t know if he was going to stop.” 

Derek scoffed, but he didn’t move until Allison had lowered the crossbow. Then he turned and started toward Stiles.

Stiles took a step back; he wasn’t imagining it when all of his friends flinched as he moved. “I’m sorry,” he breathed. “I’m sorry, I don’t—I don’t understand.” 

“You died,” Scott said very cautiously. “A hunter stabbed you and you died, and we were all—we were all too far away to get to you, there were too many hunters but then—you got up and you started…” He looked at the rest of the pack.

“You attacked them and started drinking their blood,” Erica said bluntly. “You’re a vampire. You drank their blood until they were all dead.” 

“How—how?” He gestured weakly at his face. At the fangs jutting out of his mouth. “I don’t understand how this happened? People don’t just…” He inhaled sharply.

“The vampires we fought must have given you some of their blood,” Allison said slowly. “When we thought you just hit your head a little, they must have given you blood.”

“They did,” he recalled. “The two girls—one of the other women, she knocked me down, I think she cracked my skull…the two girls were scared that I was going to die, and I think I was…but they gave me blood and it healed my head.” He touched the spot on the back of his head. 

“It probably wasn’t out of your system completely tonight when you…” Allison grimaced. “I’m sorry for trying to kill you…again…but I wasn’t sure if you were going to turn on us next.”

Stiles nodded. “I know.” He looked at the pile of bodies and felt his stomach turn. 

Before he could do or say anything else, Scott and Derek had converged on him, squashing him between their chests as they hugged him.

“Dude, I don’t care, they were going to kill us, I’m just glad you’re alive,” Scott gasped, patting his back and squeezing him. 

Stiles closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

“All you did was keep us from dying,” Derek snapped, tightening his arms around him. “You didn’t even try to hurt us. Not once.” 

“Allison was just worried you might go after someone else next,” Scott said gently. “She didn’t want to but she’s tough, you know, she wasn’t going to let you just wander around in a murderous feeding frenzy if she could stop you.”

Stiles let out a wet laugh. “Yeah, I know.” He leaned his forehead against Derek’s shoulder. “What do we know about vampires?” he squeaked. “I don’t remember anything right now.”

“Your life isn’t going to change much except that you’ll have to supplement your diet with blood,” Lydia said firmly. “You’ll likely be tired in the day time at first, but that can be fixed as long as you keep up a steady schedule of sleeping at night and staying up during the day.”

“Where am I supposed to get blood?” Stiles asked with some horror.

“It’s not like you have to kill people for blood,” Scott said dryly. “That would be why we were fighting with those vampires a couple weeks ago?” He shook his head and stepped back. “We’ll handle it, Stiles.” He stared Stiles down until he dropped his gaze and nodded. “You helped me when I got turned into a werewolf, before we even knew this stuff _existed._ I think the pack can help you figure this out.” 

“That’s right,” Derek said quietly, tipping his chin up. “It’s going to be fine.” He leaned in to kiss him, but Stiles jerked back. He looked hurt.

“No, my—I can’t figure out how to put the fangs away. I don’t want to hurt you.” 

Derek pinched his chin between his fingers and leaned in, kissing him firmly; he swiped his tongue over Stiles’s fangs and, to his surprise, they shrank back to normal. 

“Well, I guess that works. Doesn’t that taste gross, though?” he asked worriedly. 

“All I can taste is you.” 

Stiles pressed his palm against his chest, blinking in surprise. “My heart is still beating.” 

“Vampires have pulses,” Lydia said. “They’re just really slow.” 

“Oh.” 

Derek folded Stiles’s hand in his. “Come on, let’s go get you cleaned up.”

“I can help with the…” He turned to the bodies and then jerked his gaze away. “Never mind.”

“Stiles,” Allison said as she approached them. “I have to tell my dad about this, so he knows. I’m sure you’ll be fine,” she added with a quick smile. “We always are. But we do want to take precautions.” 

“Right, no, I get it.” He rubbed his face. “Bloodsucking monsters are hard to ignore.”

“You’re not a monster,” Derek snapped. 

“Um, Derek, I killed what looks like thirty people.” He frowned. “Armed people. They had weapons.” He looked down at his clothes again. 

“Yeah, they attacked you, but your wounds healed as you drank,” Scott said, frowning a little.

Stiles brightened just a bit. “Well, that’s something! Now I won’t have to be the only one getting rushed to the hospital all the time.”

“You know, you’re probably faster than us, too,” Derek said with an indulgent smile. “We’ve got more stamina, but vampires can move.”

Stiles grinned at him. “Wanna go test that out at home?”

Derek laughed and kissed him.

**Author's Note:**

> Also the Lost Boys because of obvious reasons, lol. 
> 
> See, told you everything was okay!!! <3


End file.
